Belmont needs to zone to support more housing development. In my speech to Belmont Town Meeting on May 29, I shared the evolution of my perspective on the issue. As a former local official, I understand the Town’s reluctance to take on increased housing density. But my perspective has broadened through my service of a larger region as senator. From a regional perspective, housing development is the central priority and we will fail to meet our regional goals unless every community does its share.
The following is the official transcript of the speech lightly edited.
SENATOR BROWNSBERGER: Thank you, Mr. Moderator.
Will Brownsberger, State Senator Town Meeting Member at Large.
I want to look — talk a little bit tonight about the personal journey I’ve made through my years in politics since I first started as a member of Town Meeting. I want to talk, in particular,about how I’ve grown on the issue of housing.
When we moved to Belmont in 1992 , with our young children, housing was a solved problem for us. I worried about traffic safety for my kids. I worried about the quality of schools. I generally was concerned about preserving the quality of life in Belmont.
My first role was on the South Pleasant Street Land Use Committee, and we recommended against doing any housing development on South Pleasant Street, as I recall it, because members of the committee, and I went along with this, felt that that would mean too much traffic.
And then as a member of the Select Board, I — my biggest issue for the first few years was opposing development at the McLean property, and I am glad that we saved woods and meadow there, but that was my concern. I wasn’t thinking about building housing.
Then on the Select Board and continuing as State Representative, I fought to preserve the land at the Uplands. As State Representative, I passed legislation to — and Governor Deval Patrick vetoed this, but the legislation would have had DCR purchase the property for park use.
And I tried to weaken the 40B process by making land conservation a goal that would be cognizable in the 40B appeals process.
I’m actually a little ashamed of my indifference to the issue when I first — I remember — I sat down with one of — it was early in my State Rep. career. I sat down with Paul Guzzi, who was then head of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and he talked about from a business perspective the need to build more housing, and people were leaving the State, and my reaction was kind of well, you know, it’s a free country. They want to leave; that’s fine.
When I became Senator though, I got exposed to new things, representing Watertown, representing Fenway, Allston, Brighton. In Fenway, they’ve got new 20-story buildings, marching down Boylston Street, one after another. They’re building housing everywhere, always increasing scale, always arousing opposition, but just doing it, behind those 20-story buildings, little brownstones.
In Brighton, in every neighborhood, four-, five-, six-story buildings going up next to single-family and two-family units.
In Watertown, there’s been a bit more respect for zoning space, but there’s been huge areas open for redevelopment, huge production of housing, and huge increases in the community vitality.
I came to appreciate the consequences of the different approaches, the political structures in the communities. In Boston you have a very strong mayor, and if like the last few mayors, they want to build housing, they’re going to build housing without any real consideration for local opposition.
In Watertown you have a strong manager who cannot act unilaterally, but who has the power to drive a strong planning agenda for development.
And I came to understand how our form of government, our strong Town Meeting form of government is, by nature, unlikely to achieve the same rapid production of housing. I get it. It’s wonderful to have quiet streets at night. I love this community just the way it is. I understand the vision of a Town of Homes. Housing is a solved problem for those of us who are lucky enough to be here.
But the other thing that — another thing that happened to me as I became a State Senator is my perspective as I got exposed to people of all ages, but especially young people struggling to afford housing. I hear from them all the time. My district is about two-thirds renters, rent increases, building conversions, constant turmoil.
My own daughter got an apartment in Fenway for a little while. She had to move out to Brighton. She went through three different roommate groups in Brighton. She gave up and moved home. Then she moved up to Portland, Maine; and then she moved out even further in Maine to find housing that worked for her.
And I’m no longer okay with the idea that let the young people leave. And let’s not forget the seniors who have no cost-effective options for downsizing within this community.
More broadly, loss of workers is an economic development issue, and it frustrates important public policy goals. We’re not going to achieve our climate goals without expansion of the construction industry from electricians to carpenters to HVAC workers. We need them all. We can’t staff our hospitals. We can’t care for our elderly and disabled. I work and I hear from many disabled people who can’t hire the home care that they’re entitled to hire and that they desperately need. Name the field, we’re having trouble hiring.
We just have to pick up the pace on housing construction statewide, and we can’t get it done in Boston and Cambridge and Watertown and Somerville alone, which they account for a majority of the housing production in the State.
Every community has to welcome housing and do their share. And I honestly believe that some meaningful apartment production would be great for this community, which I do love. Lack of housing options contributes to transience and loss of community and connection in Belmont. Our kids can’t live here. People who work here can’t live here. People leave Town when their kids get grown because they have no downsizing options in Town. I’ve watched so many senior citizens, active people in the community integrated into the community just leave, because there’s no option within the community.
The MBTA zoning proposal, which you will consider later this year, is an important step, and I’m hopeful that after debate you will approve it. I think as of today 80 communities have approved plans removing zoning barriers to housing.
However, there are many other barriers to housing. Zoning is just the one that we can control. Interest rates. Until the Fed. lets up, we’re not going to build much housing. Labor. No labor, no housing. But, hey, no housing no labor. It’s a tight cycle we’re going to have to try to break out of. Supply chain issues. And this is the one that never goes away, site assembly. There just aren’t necessarily sites that are ready at any given time to build housing on no matter how they’re zoned.
So that’s why I hope that in years ahead, Belmont and the State as a whole will embrace even stronger liberalization of zoning to open up more sites. We just have to open a lot of sites, so that some of them will work.
So I can tell you that essentially all of my colleagues in the State House — and by the way, most legislators that I talk to in other urban states that have the same sort of planning model where the zoning restricts housing, everybody has housing at the top of their agenda.
We’re about to pass a $4 billion bond bill to support housing development, but it’s going to be a drop in the bucket, a drop in the bucket of housing need.
So we need to liberalize zoning much more broadly and free up the private sector to build more housing. It is at this time my fondest public policy hope that together we’ll find a way to build a lot more housing in this community and allow a lot more — give more people the opportunities to live here. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
MODERATOR WIDMER: Thank you, Senator.
Why don’t you fix the illegal immigration problem first? That will take the pressure off the housing market. Tell the Governor to stop playing around with Nibi the Beaver and get to work.
Bob, you are CORRECT.
You see, the Democratic Party regards the 10+ million illegal aliens that Biden & Harris (the “Border Czar”) have deliberately let in (with basically NO vetting) as future voters for Democrats. Obviously, Democrats would not let in huge numbers of future GOP voters.
Crime, housing, education, disease, cost, sex/child/drug trafficking are immaterial because the prize (marginalizing GOP and the Right) is worth the negatives to Democrats & liberals.
These illegals will become citizens eventually and vote for Democrats, perhaps soon.
Another motive:
To change the demographics of America from mainly European-descent, White Christians to something else.
I won’t go into details because it can be discussed only where truly open dialogue is permitted.
Dee – I am offended by what you wrote. Your statements are incorrect. I welcome migrants to our city and, specifically, I want to live in a multi-cultural city. The so-called white Christian way of life is fine but nothing to aspire to. (I’m white too). I suggest you learn about people who are different from you by talking with some.
I have been speaking out to advocate for more housing in Watertown. One thing I discovered is that many people selfishly don’t want to share their environment with others. But the city does not belong to them. It belongs to everyone who wants to contribute to it.
Watertown has already done an amazing job with housing and it does not need further expansion. It’s time for Belmont to step up. Belmont’s schools can handle an influx of a diverse student population and there is sufficient land. Public housing belongs in every community. Belmont will ultimately benefit. Diversity enriches communities.
Christ said to welcome foreigners (sometimes translated as “strangers”). In political contexts these days, “Christian” means rejecting the actual words of Christ.
yes great Bob
He still dancing around the solution which is to enforce some bill to limit how mush Landlords can collect from tenants living in low income housing,and basically allow landlords to collect a stipend from Hud which covers all housing cost landlords may have, he ignoring the fact that the bill that I’m referring to has been setting in the housing committee since 2010, then ignoring the fact is their not housing the Americans already here but collaborating with the attorney general Andrea Campbell Elizabeth warren and healey to send chain letters to DHS to prioritize housing jobs schools and jobs for folks coming here illegally which they claim
The fact of the matter that someone can come here and get a job with out even speaking English right away and I had to jump through hoops to get one say’s it all make it make since folks wake up don’t let the smile distract your truth his actions speak louder than words,expanding more housing only increases climate change which fossil fuel and human make up the majority of that which is why we had all day days of heat waves,and for the fact of the matter most of the Boston city council is from Haiti speaks it all one is married to someone doing life in jail again folks do your research and stop being blind sided from the truth
Excellent speech.
I would love to have the transcript to share with others……..
Is the concept of being a indirect unfunded mandate come up? I can see new housing units bringing in more school children to a community creating a higher property tax problem that the new residential taxes on the units will not fully cover.
Dear Edward:
They don’t care about the cost to cities of more students from housing and illegal immigration.
I explain why above.
Housing will be a justice issue until the precisely instant it isn’t.
P.s., Greater Boston is at, near, or beyond its carrying capacity and justice is managing and maintaining a healthy population size. “Healthy” Boston growth is physically, structurally checked by the infrastructure and geography. I don’t like the sound of a command economy via zoning dictates. (Especially as perceived need and popular political expediency are confluent.)
How is it just to spend generations in the dense central city only to find that when you have the mobility to move to a Belmont, Lexington, Arlington, or Concord that those towns don’t really exist anymore?
Fred, this is what comes from voting for Democrats.
Dee, you can imagine my frustration as a Democrat seeing my party playing into the Ayatollah’s hands and the hands of the greater Axis, including Russia and China, by pandering to Socialist-Progressives for votes and undermining our allies who are in an impossible situation.
Fortunately MA is a safe state and I don’t need to feel pressured to endorse the absurd, arrogant, anomalous and incompetent top of the Democratic ticket the DNC foisted on Dems. The folks my party is pandering to are not informed by the wisdom of millennia of civilization, or the centuries of American progress, but by the gloss, the patina of feel-good Oprah feel-good quackery in their social media feeds. The win at all costs pandering to the Squadites and Sandersites will only serve to further Balkanize our country and deepen the avenues of attack for our enemies and adversaries. Even as a helpless gesture of defiance I don’t think I could bring myself to vote for Trump as much as I fear and loathe the process that gave us such an non-presidential character as Harris. I cannot endorse the insurrectionist who brought our country so low in spite of how many spirits he’s lifted. He is ungodly and anathema to our hard won Western values, and yet, the prospect of a Harris victory being a mandate ti the agenda of those who have only animus for America in their hearts and a low form of selfish TicTok tribalism in their minds.
Great speech!
When I taught school in Belmont, I was told there was no public housing, because residents didn’t want it, and that they agreed to the METCO program on the basis that public housing would never be built.
I lived in Boston then and I still do.
Residents in Belmont should not be weighing in on this zoning proposal unless they’re ready to build some towering apartments right next to the train station in Belmont Center. Some apartments like what are being built off Soldiers Field Road and Market Street and Western Ave in Brighton.
Are you seeking opinions from residents in Belmont to find out if they are willing to allow 6 story apartment buildings within the town limits? Shouldn’t Belmont residents be willing to do this? There’s an amazing train station right there in Belmont Center. I would be interested to know if there were any willingness from a majority of town residents to allow multi-family apartment buildings to be built adjacent to that train station.
If Belmont residents aren’t willing to set aside land to do that, whether it be public or private, why should they be weighing in on this new zoning for the rest of the state??
Hi PJ,
Belmont and everywhere in Massachusetts and America need to create housing not only for citizens but for the MILLIONS of illegal aliens too, *don’t you agree?*
Indeed, these migrants are not just crossing the southern border but Democrats are FLYING them in. That is, it’s all deliberate. See here:
https://cis.org/Bensman/Secret-Finally-Revealed-Americans-Can-Know-US-Cities-Receiving-Hundreds-Thousands
Bottom line:
Who is going to build enough housing for the continuing flood of MILLIONS of illegal, unvetted immigrants?
No one.
Thank you for putting this up here. One of the things I think about is the aging community. Not necessarily people looking to downsize, but older people who want to stay in their homes as long as possible. Many are singles in 2-3 bedroom condos or apartments (like myself).
I believe the zoning should liberalize the ability to create auxiliary apartments, so these people can share their housing. There are many people looking for short-term housing for whom this would be a win-win situation: rent at a reduced rate, extra income for seniors. It also helps keep a neighborhood intact. I hope this will be part of the zoning changes, and not just big apartment buildings.
I think many times that Boston’s close suburbs will start to look like the Bronx or Brooklyn. That is what people really fear. (This is not a wish for more AirBnBs, which I think are very destructive to neighorhoods and communities when they are commercialized. )
Sidenote: I remember my dad telling me that after his Italian immigrant family moved from NYC to the Bronx, they were able to let their dogs run in the woods. I thought, (“woods? in the Bronx?”). I can imagine someday, “river? there’s a river in Watertown?”.
Neither Belmont, nor greater Boston, are remotely overcrowded. People who take that perspective are viewing development through an incredibly narrow lens.
If our local businesses are to thrive, they need customers within walking distance. If our seniors are to be able to age in place, they need walkable services near to them. Belmont’s downtown struggles exactly because four- and five- and six-story mixed-use development, with reasonable affordability and design requirements, is not permitted as of right near it. The entire block of retail, which is currently largely wasted on surface parking, could feasibly be redeveloped as transit-oriented mixed-use development, without disturbing the current development patterns of the vast majority of the Town. In turn, that would also help young people to be able to afford to stay in town and raise families here.
Good on Senator Brownsberger for supporting the MBTA Communities Act. And shame on the xenophobic commenters here, many of whom are presumably descended from immigrants who settled here and made lives for themselves and their families when it was affordable to do so. I’m an immigrant here, I own a home here, and I’m not looking to pull up the ladder after me for other people who also want to live here.
LEGAL immigration, Alex, not illegal immigration.
I think you and others know the difference but pretend not to.
And “flying them in” as Biden and Harris are doing by the hundreds of thousands is absurd.
It’s LIMITLESS. Look up that word too in Websters.
https://cis.org/Bensman/Secret-Finally-Revealed-Americans-Can-Know-US-Cities-Receiving-Hundreds-Thousands.
I’d appreciate it if people could knock off trying to hijack a discussion about appropriate zoning for private/nonprofit housing construction in Belmont, with “BUT THE ILLEGALS”
Dee, what undocumented immigrants do you believe would be able to get a mortgage to buy apartments built in Belmont, or rent them at the likely rents? Are these undocumented people you fear so much, simultaneously in possession of significant family wealth, or able to hold down a six-figure job locally? The only way in which undocumented people are eligible for any housing benefit, as far as I recall from my work running an affordable housing nonprofit in Waltham two decades ago, is if they are a direct family member living with a U. S. citizen receiving that benefit. Since this is a discussion about zoning changes to permit new private or nonprofit construction, not a discussion about building new multifamily public housing in Belmont, I don’t see how it’s possible to claim that undocumented people would occupy any newly constructed units.
You may also be confusing this discussion with the discussion over emergency housing, like shelters and hotels. The article you link to discusses immigrants from “Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela”, who are generally under “Temporary Protected Status”, which means they’re legally here. You may not like that part of immigration law, but that doesn’t make it not law, and doesn’t turn people legally here into being illegally here. Even for people who have entered illegally, from other countries than the ones named in the article, who then for asylum, the US government’s treaty obligations require them to be considered legally present while their claims are being adjudicated. Again, you don’t have to like that law, but it’s the law.
Last, on the matter of whether people’s ancestors immigrated legally; let’s face it, prior to 1920, if you were trying to come to the US from Europe, it was pretty much impossible for you to come illegally. Ellis Island checked basically whether you had tuberculosis, Yes or No, and if the answer was No, you were in. If your forebears came in that way, they don’t have a claim to moral superiority over similarly unskilled people who, faced with today’s system that Congress has designed to offer no feasible way for them to come legally, come in illegally.
The push for auxiliary housing was proposed many, many years ago by small landlords but the state did not listen.
Now I think a recent housing law allows them but I don’t know details.
Thanks for posting, Belmont is overcrowded now, 6 story buildings should not be put up in Belmont, keep our zoning laws in place. Too much traffic now. Solve the illegal alliens problems coming into this country first. Belmont has enough low income property now. Take and use the old light building in Belmont Center that is in decay.
Fix our roads first, people who want the illegals can offer to take them into their own homes or put up a tent n their back yards. I understand the crime rate has gone up the the Cushing Square large apartment complexes that the Toll Brothers put up. Police visit regularly. Give us a break.
Amen, Marcia.
Am I permitted to use that word?
Yes thanks Dee
Crazy times – sad Belmont where I grew up has gone downhill terribly! Roads are a disaster
Traffic, large 6 story buildings up in Cushing Square look horrible and now they want more construction- overpopulation now, more crime , we all need to speak up
Wow. Such hatred. Gotta love humanity.
The threats to housing access include venture capitalists grabbing up supply of lower end homes & charging market rents that are costly, air B&B units taking long-term rentals off the market, insufficient building capacity since the financial crisis in 2008 and zoning restrictions. Creating new supply will require addressing these issues & others. This law tackles an important part of the problem & shares responsibility among many communities.
My daughter pays exorbitant rent for a mediocre apartment & is in a hopeless race to purchase an affordable home. Her competition for these homes? Venture capitalist housing corporations, investment flippers, & other well-off buyers paying $50k above asking & in cash with no contingencies. The profile of this privileged group is American & upper middle class.
Impoverished immigrants are not the problem here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studies
Nice comments. Yes, as I approach the senior phase, you’re right, there are very limited options to downsize in Belmont. I look forward to seeing what new developments can come to town.